Word of the Week: Local-Washing

There's a new game in town when it comes to greenwashing, and you guessed it, it's about local. The demand for green, local, and organic is ever-growing, which is fabulous, but unfortunately seems a reason for some some to take advantage.

Knowing a food or product is local can be straightforward: visit your farmer's market, read a vendor's sign, see they farm near you, buy product. But it's not always so simple.

I read about "local-washing" on the blog of some great people running "Localize," a start-up in Alberta who are designing a service that "shines the spotlight on local food in places like grocery stores and restaurants."

According to the post's author, Matthew Stepanic, local-washing is to 1. make unsubstantiated claims that a product is local or 2. use local as a marketing claim that makes a business appear more local than it is in reality.

He notes that some stores confuse customers by displaying produce signs that read "Local" without noting where the produce is actually from. It could be tricky and misleading, but it could also be that stores aren't sure exactly what "local" means. 100-mile standards? From the same community? From the same province or territory? From Canada?

There are a range of definitions, and no standard. Luckily, there are organizations like "Localize" who are working to change that. Read more about their crowd-sourced and dynamic measurement of localness at localizeyourfood.com.